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Britain Won't Bend in Ban on Curvaceous Schools

October 4, 2012, 1pm PDT

The UK's Department for Education is banning curved walls, glazed walls, internal partitions, and a host of other design elements and materials in an attempt to keep a lid on costs for its five-year $4 billion school-building program.

Robert Booth reports on the design templates unveiled this week for 261 replacement school buildings to be constructed over the next five years. As Booth notes, "[t]he templates tell architects new schools should have "no curves or
'faceted' curves, corners should be square, ceilings should be left
bare and buildings should be clad in nothing more expensive than render
or metal panels above head height. As much repetition as possible should
be used to keep costs down."

The announcement has sparked outrage from architects. "It is extraordinarily over-prescriptive and it shows an extreme lack of
trust in the architectural and construction professions to deliver
schools to budget," says Peter Clegg, a partner at Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios.

"Gove clearly has issues with architecture. Last year he told a free-schools conference, 'We won't be getting Richard Rogers to design your school. We won't be
getting any award-winning architects to design it, because no one in
this room is here to make architects richer.' Never mind what works for
children or teachers. Or the fact that architects, especially
award-winning ones, are generally quite good at designing buildings. Or
the fact that the day before this outburst, Gove had been praising Hackney's Mossbourne Community Academy – designed by, er, Richard Rogers."

"So now he's literally putting things straight," says Rose. "Perhaps this is the first
step towards a square new coalition utopia – a world entirely designed
by Lego, Rubik, Mondrian and David Chipperfield. Although that sounds a bit colourful. Perhaps colour should go too. Who needs it, after all?"